No, this is not some techy thing from an actual different country, as the title might lead you to believe…. it’s Shana’s first ever Tech Tuesday post! Don’t worry though, pigs are not flying, this is as much “alternative transportation” related as it is techy.
Anyway, check it out: this morning, Autoweek (yeah, I definitely don’t read Autoweek, it was forwarded to me) featured the following headline:
… with a gallery full of pictures, including this one:
yeah baby
You know, a lot of us have been saying for a long time that you don’t need a whole big, gas guzzling car to go five blocks up the road and pick up a bag of groceries – cars are, as the article states, “overengineered” for a lot of everyday situations. This baby can reach speeds up to 35mph and lasts for about 35 miles between charges… yep, that’ll get you to the g-store and back, with a lot less wasted along the way.
Anyway, they’re apparently not actually legal to drive on either streets or sidewalks at this point… which leaves us with… golf courses? Just so long as it’s not bike lanes. Anyway, they’re not commercially available yet, we’ve got lots of time to iron out logistics.
Also, on totally unrelated note, my birthday’s in September, so… if you haven’t decided what you’re getting me yet…
Watching the above video brings back fond memories of a computer game I used to play in elementary school called “The Incredible Machine.” In those days, it represented the best of consumer-class computer physics simulations. I didn’t have this game for my 286 IBM Compatible at home. Instead, my experiences with it were confined to those all too infrequent moments at school when I had a chance to use our classroom’s one computer workstation–a cutting-edge Macintosh LC.
So cool.
To put all things in perspective a bit here, we’re talking about a machine that’s running at about 1/40 the processing power of the cellphone in your pocket, and yet the Macintosh LC represented the pinnacle of computer hardware in my life at that time. Of course, I was running at about 2/5 the life experience of what I have today. All that to say, “The Incredible Machine” instantly became the highlight of my day whenever I was allowed to play it. Ahh, those were the days…
While waxing nostalgic, I decided to see if there was perhaps a way to relive some of that childhood magic — a quick googling of “The Incredible Machine” seemed to present only false hope as I discovered a 2007 remake of the game in one click and learned of it’s mid-development cancellation in the next. Bummer.
Not being one to give up after a single googling, I persisted …a virtue that, for me, hasn’t been very rewarding lately (without getting too far off topic, it should suffice to say, I’ve spent far too much time stuck in the infinite regress of our natural gas companies arcane automated telephone system lately). Of course, this being such a trivial endeavor, I met with success! I’m pleased to be able to share with you, that the original “The Incredible Machine” game is indeed going to be re-released after all! … as a cellphone game!
Here’s a little video with a bunch of random clips I shot today with our new Canon Vixia HG20. There’s nothing special here, I was just trying to get an idea for how the camera performs under different conditions. Enjoy!
After MANY hours of research, we landed on the camera you see above: the Canon Vixia HG-20. It’s just about the best consumer class full HD camcorder available on the current market. This thing has a small army of features that should impress even the snobbiest of video aficionados. Aside from the ability to shoot in full and glorious 1920×1080 HD, it can do so in any number of different modes, including 24p, 30p and 60i — there’s also and optional “cinemode” for rich mid-tones and a more cinematic feel. Apparently while there’s no explicit macro mode, this camera nonetheless has an natural ability to take breath-taking macro footage. It’s amazing Optical Image Stabilization feature utilizes some new technology and manages to work miracles making the shakiest of shots look like it they were taken from a tripod. From a tech geek perspective, the number one thing that I like about this camera is that it’s implementation AVCHD (the controversional, compressed HD video format) can record at 24Mbit/s instead of the standard 13 Mbit/s. That’s a huge quality gain. Without getting into too many more details, let the following video suffice as evidence of the camera’s solid performance and quality.
Yes, the Canon Vixia HG-20 can make even a stupid video of a squirrel look impressive.
“What if we were to advertise this humble little Chicago blog?”
That’s a question I’ve been pondering lately, and I’ll address it shortly, but first, allow me speculate a bit on why we blog.
We started sharing all these stories, photos and randomness from our lives mostly for the benefit of our family and friends. I think it’s fair to say that maintaining this blog helps us, and reportedly our readers, feel a bit more connected. My father lives in Portland, OR and my mother in Washington, DC. We talk on the phone with a healthy degree of regularity but being able to share all these photos and thoughtful stories seems to really deepen that dialogue. So, while it’s a whole lot of fun for both Shana and myself to work on this blog, I think the real reason we continue doing it, everyday, is because we receive such positive feedback from all of you.
Now, let’s talk about “gas money” (just bear with me here). I don’t know about you, but we could use some extra “gas money” now and again. I use the term “gas money” loosely because we don’t actually have … a car … per se … but it still seems like the right metaphor because we do have bicycles and I sure have felt a bit low on fuel lately. This is where that whole advertising idea I mentioned early comes into play. The basic idea being that if we could drive enough traffic to our site and gain a wide enough readership we might be able to slightly augment our income. It wouldn’t be much, but we wouldn’t be looking for much — just a little gas money.
Finally, to get to my point in all of this, I really like the idea of this blog getting more exposure, but I don’t want to change the way we write posts, or to feel like we need to censor the photos we share, or otherwise suck the life out of what we’re trying to do here in an attempt to accommodate a more generic readership. This blog is for you — not some generic “everyone.”
It’s with that balance in mind that I created our first ad (you might need to refresh the page to watch the animation!):
We are probably going start advertising the site and trying to bring in more readers, but we are not going to betray our original and intended readership–our friends, our family and, perhaps most importantly, our cats.
P.S. The banner ad above was made using a brand new SaaS (Software as a Service) application called BannerSnack. It takes all of the work out of creating cool flash web banners by providing a easy to use point and click design interface as well as generating all the code needed to share your new creations with the world. And with that now said, I’m totally counting this as my Tech Tuesday post.
I’m not feeling well. If you’re lucky, I might try to squeeze a fun and educational technology post in later the week. If you’re needing something to read, I’d strongly encourage you to check out Shana’s two awesome posts from yesterday. Though completely un-cat-related, she nonetheless finds a way to sneak a photo of our cats into each one. It’s really quite a talent, you know.
Since when has 10PM become late night for me? …I can’t pin it down but I know it happened somewhere in the last three or four years. Anyway, today is Tech Tuesday here at Our Chicago Blog and I owe you all a technology related post of some sort. Shana and I discussed it, and we’re aware that Tech Tuesday has the potential to become simply a geekier version of Monday’s theme: Product Endorsement. My thinking is that whether the Tuesday topic ends up being a product, a service or a perhaps just a concept, it’s still not necessarily an endorsement. With all of that in mind, I’m nonetheless going to write this post about something that could potentially be seen as a product and that I also fairly strongly endorse — Google “My Maps.”
I’ve been doing alot of work with the Google Maps Application Programming Interface (API) lately. The Google Maps API is a service made available by Google so that programmers can utilize all of the power of Google Maps on their or their client’s own web site. I mention this because Google “My Maps” is basically your everyday Joe’s API. Unlike the actual API which requires knowledge of at least three different scripting languages and extensive knowledge of how web services operate, “My Maps” is a simple point and click interface for creating your own customized maps that you can put on your website as “mapplets” or share with the world straight from the Google Maps web site. I could write up a whole big set of instructions here and bore you to death or I could point you now to an excellent video tutorial that demonstrate everything you need to know to get started:
Well, that pretty much says it all… Have fun making maps!
